A Day to Remember

Here in the U.S. we are celebrating Memorial Day today. It’s a day to remember all of those who have served this great country and in many cases given their lives so that we can be free to do and say what we think.

Many of us take that for granted most of the time, myself included. Today is the day to stop and think about all of the people who have made all of this possible, and continue to do so. Thank you.

1 Response to A Day to Remember

I thank you for the reminder and the kind words. You see, I’m one of those who served and this day is special for me, but also terrible for me as well. This is the one day where I will raise a glass of scotch with one of my Service buddies (we served in the Navy together and crossed paths more times and in more places around the world than I care to remember in my 11 years of active duty) and we say a prayer to absent friends. Some of them are more poignant than others: “Skip” South, who retired as a First Class Cryptologic Technician, who died of a massive heart attack…of Naval Captain (Ret) David Henry who I had just reconnected with on LinkedIn, who said that we were going to get together after he got back from his conference in San Francisco, and who died in his wife’s arms in the lobby of the hotel during that conference…of Captain Cho, US Army, who I’d trained and didn’t know he’d died until I saw a special on National Geographic, whose star now
adorns the Wall at the National Security Agency…of SPC, later SGT Amanda Pinson, who I also trained in the finer arts of tracking “bad guys”, who died in a rocket attack in Tikrit, Iraq, the first female attached to the 101st Airborne to ever die in a combat area, was the first female Signals Intelligence analyst to die as a result of enemy action, and whose star also adorns the Wall of Honor at the NSA. These are just a few of the fine men and women I met while I was in, and later on as a civilian contractor, and it’s to these people that I say thank you…thank you for allowing me to be your friend, your subordinate, your trainer, your mentor, and thank you for coming into my life…it’s so much more enriched by my having met and known you. I won’t mourn your passing because I know you’ll all kick my butt in whatever Heaven we all end up, so I will just lift my glass and say, “To absent friends.”